Post by rlg213 on Jan 5, 2018 19:25:54 GMT

Hello,

What initial temperature does qswitched have coded for armor in the game?I mean the temperature of the armor when entering the sandbox before it takes hits, nukes, lasers or any form of damage that generates heat in the armor.

Even after this, I think the armor should be closer to 0 K.In a warship, the armor is only connected to the others modules by the structure and the modules are cool trough radiators not the armor.

The only thing that could warm up quite a lot the armor is the Sun but I don't know if this is simulate.

Isn't 0 K absolute zero? As in, it's so cold it's invisible to the naked eye as a result of atoms literally holding in place?

Space isn't THAT cold (don't get me wrong, it's incredibly cold).

If I were to go with my American learning of temperatures in space, it is about -230 degrees Fahrenheit at the outer edges of space (Saturn edge, not Kuieper (I'm 100% sure I spelt it wrong) belt edge)

Post by AdmiralObvious on Jan 7, 2018 6:43:11 GMT

Isn't temperature relative to distance from the sun (or other generic heating celestial body), based solely on solar radiation though?

Like, Mercury is a few hundred degrees, while, say Pluto is in the lower range of negatives? We'll ignore the fact that these bodies may or may not have an atmosphere.

Isn’t that the planet surface’s temperature?

Also, the temperature on a planet far away from a star doesn’t have to be 2.73 K...

Planetary surface temperature has a bit to do with distance from the local star though, right? Wouldn't the same apply to a spacecraft. It's also some of the reason solar panels become much less useful once you go last the asteroid belt.

Post by The Astronomer on Jan 7, 2018 7:11:53 GMT

Also, the temperature on a planet far away from a star doesn’t have to be 2.73 K...

Planetary surface temperature has a bit to do with distance from the local star though, right? Wouldn't the same apply to a spacecraft. It's also some of the reason solar panels become much less useful once you go last the asteroid belt.

What I was trying to say is, space itself does not have temperature because there is nothing to have temperature.

Post by jtyotjotjipaefvj on Jan 7, 2018 11:23:49 GMT

The ambient temperature of of armor depends on a lot more factors than just distance from the sun. It's whatever temperature the incoming and outgoing energies balance out at. Most of the energy will probably come from the sun, but even that is not that simple. Surface reflectance and interreflection can have an effect on incoming irradiance as well (think parabolic mirrors for an extreme case.)

Heat conduction can go both ways: if the armor is heated by the sun, it may conduct heat towards the inner hull, where it will eventually go out through some radiator. Alternatively, if the armor is cold, some energy is bound to find its way to the armor through structural supports.

Finally, the armor radiates heat away just like a radiator would, if perhaps a little less efficiently since its materials are not optimized for the purpose.

The armor also won't stay at a uniform temperature, but will have heat gradients based on local changes in incoming and outgoing heat. The armor will settle at whatever temperature all these factors balance out. Incoming heat will be roughly constant, whereas energy loss through heat conduction will scale with the local temperature gradient, and heat radiation to the fourth power of temperature.

All of this is so complicated to simulate properly that you would have to either limit ship count to just a few ships, or use gross estimation to make the ordeal pretty much pointless in the first place. And either way, armor ambient temperature is quite an insignificant factor, even with lasing damage. If I had to guess, the game just sets the ambient temperature to some low constant and settles at that.